The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) issued its first-time national advisory warning black people and women about traveling to a single state – Missouri
The civil rights organization has issued the warning due to the hostile environment and racism. Missouri lawmakers passed Senate Bill in June, which made it harder for people to sue businesses for race discrimination.
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According to the statement “The advisory means each should pay special attention while in the state and certainly if contemplating spending time there. Individuals traveling in the state are advised to travel with extreme CAUTION. Race, gender, and color based crimes have a long history in Missouri.”
The statement specifies attacks against black people, deaths in police custody, and a report that found black drivers are 75% more likely to be stopped in Missouri compared to white drivers.
The statement goes on, and among other incidents, it points to an event from February in which two Indian men shot in Kansas City, and one killed, by a man yelling Islamophobic slurs.
“You have violations of civil rights that are happening to people. They’re being pulled over because of their skin color, they’re being beaten up or killed. We are hearing complaints at a rate we haven’t heard before,” the president of the Missouri NAACP, Rod Chapel, told the Kansas City Star.
The statement reads:
“Unlike seasonal weather advisories, where no unnecessary travel on city streets or parking might be directed, the NAACP wants to make Missourians and our visitors aware of looming danger which could include the following by example of what has happened to some residents and visitors:
Tory Sanford who recently died in a jail cell but was never arrested after running out of gas when he traveled into the state accidentally; Racist attacks on University of Missouri students while on the states’ campuses – as the University of Missouri System spoke in favor of Romine’s Jim Crow Bill; Missouri’s legislature Representative Rick Bratton argued that homosexuals are not human beings according to his faith; Black high school students in St. Louis have been attacked with hot glue while denigrated racially; Two internationally born men gunned down outside in Kansas City after their killer thought them to be Muslim; According to the Missouri Attorney General African Americans in Missouri are subjected to excessive traffic – 75% more likely to be stopped and searched based on skin color than Caucasians, Public threats of shooting ‘Blacks’ that terrorized University of Missouri students and members of the public.
Individuals traveling in the state are advised to travel with extreme CAUTION. Race, gender and color based crimes have a long history in Missouri…”
